The Difference Between Coaching and Therapy

Here’s a secret: I used to think coaching was bullshit.

But that was many years ago, before I had ever actually worked with a coach.

Here’s another secret: I used to think therapy was bullshit too. And yes, you guessed it, that was before I gave therapy a real chance and eventually found the right therapists and forms of therapy for me.

After working with multiple therapists, different therapeutic approaches and coaches over the past fifteen years, I no longer see much reason to pit the two against each other. I've benefited enormously from both, and still do.

They can overlap, but they're designed to do different kinds of work.

Understanding that difference is particularly important if you're considering coaching for the first time, because one of the questions I hear most often is some variation of:

“Isn't coaching basically therapy?”

No. But the distinction is slightly more nuanced than I used to think.

The Difference Between Coaching and Therapy

I used to explain the difference in terms of tenses.

Therapy goes backwards so you can go forward. Coaching goes forward so you can go further.

It's a nice line, but I've since realized it's an oversimplification.

Plenty of therapy focuses on the present and future, and coaching doesn't pretend your past doesn't exist. Your childhood, previous relationships, experiences, beliefs and emotional patterns obviously influence the person sitting in front of the coach today.

A better distinction, in my experience, is in the type of work you're trying to do.

Therapy often asks: What happened, how is it affecting you, and what needs healing or changing?

Coaching tends to ask: Where are you now, where do you want to go, and what needs to happen to get you there?

There is obviously overlap between those questions, and different therapists and coaches work in very different ways. But as a general distinction, I find it useful.

Therapy can involve the assessment and treatment of mental health conditions, trauma, significant emotional distress and psychological difficulties. A properly trained mental health professional has expertise and clinical responsibilities that a coach does not.

Coaching is not treatment.

The coaching relationship is generally built around development. Clarity, self-awareness, decisions, behavioural change, goals, accountability, performance and ultimately closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

That doesn't mean coaching can't become deeply emotional or even healing. Mine certainly has and can. But healing isn't a clinical service I'm providing.

Understanding Yourself vs Changing Your Behaviour

One of the biggest things I've learned from doing both therapy and coaching is that understanding something and changing it are not necessarily the same process.

You can understand exactly why you behave a certain way and continue doing it.

You can know where your insecurity came from.

You can understand your relationship patterns.

You can identify why you seek validation.

You can understand why you procrastinate, why you avoid difficult conversations, or why certain behaviours around women and sex have become habitual.

That understanding can be enormously valuable.

But eventually another question arrives:

What are you going to do about it?

This is where I've personally found coaching particularly powerful.

After a coaching session, there should generally be movement. Something becomes clearer. A decision gets made. A behaviour is challenged. An action is taken. Between sessions, life becomes the place where the work is actually practised.

The insight matters because it informs the action.

But the action matters because that's where your life actually changes.

Why I Think Coaching Can Work Particularly Well for Men

This has become increasingly important to me since I began focusing my work specifically on men.

I don't believe coaching is inherently better for men than therapy. Men can benefit enormously from therapy if it’s the right type for the right man, and I've personally benefited from some of them myself.

But I do believe there are characteristics of coaching that many men respond particularly well to.

In my experience, many men want an environment that combines honest conversation with direction, challenge, accountability and action.

Men absolutely need spaces where they can talk honestly about fear, shame, relationships, sexuality, failure and the things they rarely say out loud. I think the inability or unwillingness to do that has caused enormous damage to men.

But I've also found that many men don't only want to understand themselves better.

They want somewhere to take that understanding.

They want to know what changes Monday morning.

What conversation needs to happen?

What behaviour needs to stop?

What standard needs to be established?

What commitment needs to be kept?

What uncomfortable thing have they been avoiding?

What does becoming the man they say they want to become actually require from them?

That's where the coaching relationship can become incredibly powerful.

We can talk deeply about what you're experiencing, where it comes from and what it means. But eventually we're also going to ask:

What are you going to do about it?

The Gap Between Knowing and Doing

Many of the men I work with aren't incapable of understanding themselves.

Quite the opposite.

They're often intelligent, introspective and highly capable men who have already read the books, listened to the podcasts, watched the videos and spent an enormous amount of time thinking about themselves.

They frequently know what they're doing wrong.

The problem is that knowing hasn't necessarily changed the behaviour.

There can be a gap between a man's values and his actions. Between the way he wants to relate to women and the way he has conditioned himself to relate to them. Between wanting integrity and repeatedly making exceptions in private. Between knowing what he should do and consistently doing it.

That gap interests me enormously.

Because eventually personal development has to become behavioural.

You can spend years constructing increasingly sophisticated explanations for why you are the way you are, and some of those explanations may be completely valid. But at some point, if you want your life to change, something about the way you actually live has to change too.

For many men, I think coaching provides a very effective structure for doing exactly that.

Coaching Isn't About “Needing Help”

One of the misconceptions I had before experiencing good coaching myself was that coaching was something you sought because you couldn't figure your life out on your own.

I see it very differently now.

There are limits to how objectively any human being can see himself.

We all have blind spots. We rationalize our behaviour. We make exceptions for ourselves. We become trapped inside our own perspective and sometimes can't see the incredibly obvious thing sitting directly in front of us.

This is true whether you're struggling or extraordinarily successful.

Having someone whose job is to listen carefully, ask difficult questions, challenge your assumptions, notice patterns and hold you accountable to the things you said matter to you can dramatically accelerate change.

That isn't weakness.

It's leverage.

Coaching Isn't Just “Life Coaching”

Another misconception is that all coaching is essentially generic “life coaching.”

I've never particularly liked that term.

The only person I would hire to coach my entire life would probably be a happy, healthy 95-year-old who had somehow lived exactly the kind of life I wanted to live.

Most good coaches develop particular areas of expertise based on some combination of their training, professional experience, personal experience and the kind of people they understand deeply.

That's why I chose to work specifically with men.

And more specifically, why much of my work focuses on men's relationship with desire, women, sexuality, integrity, discipline and self-leadership.

These aren't subjects I selected because I found an attractive coaching niche.

They're subjects I've spent years confronting in my own life.

My job isn't to pretend I have lived every man's experience. It's to bring the combination of coaching skill, lived experience and perspective that allows me to work deeply in the areas I genuinely understand.

Coaching Is Not Therapy

This boundary matters.

A coach should not attempt to become your unqualified therapist simply because the conversation gets deep.

Your childhood may come up in coaching.

Your relationship with your parents may come up.

Shame may come up.

Previous relationships may come up.

Sexual experiences may come up.

Painful memories may come up.

The past doesn't suddenly become forbidden territory because you're sitting with a coach.

The important distinction is what we're doing with that material.

We might examine how a past experience contributed to a belief you're carrying today, for example, and then look at whether that belief is affecting the way you're currently living.

But if what emerges requires clinical assessment, trauma treatment, treatment of a mental health condition, or something else beyond the coach's competence, that's where an appropriately qualified mental health professional belongs.

A good coach should know that boundary.

Sometimes the Answer Is Both

I don't believe everyone needs to choose between coaching and therapy.

I certainly haven't.

Therapy has helped me work through deeper emotional wounds, experiences and psychological patterns. Coaching has helped me translate awareness into decisions, action, growth and changes in the way I live.

At different stages of my life, I've needed different things.

And sometimes I've benefited from both simultaneously.

If you're experiencing significant psychological distress, struggling with your mental health, dealing with trauma that requires treatment, or need clinical support, therapy may be the appropriate place to start.

If you're generally functioning but know there is a gap between how you're currently living and how you want to live, and you want challenge, structure, reflection, accountability and action to close that gap, coaching may be a very good fit.

And sometimes there is deeper work that belongs in therapy while you're simultaneously working with a coach on how you want to move forward.

Human beings are complicated.

There isn't always one box.

What Coaching With Me Actually Looks Like

My coaching is built around a combination of honest conversation, self-examination, challenge, standards, accountability and action.

I'm not interested in sitting across from a man and simply telling him how to live his life.

But I'm equally uninterested in having fascinating conversations every week that produce absolutely no change outside the conversation.

The objective is transformation.

That means understanding yourself more deeply, but also translating that understanding into the way you actually live.

Particularly in my work with men, that often means examining uncomfortable contradictions.

You say integrity matters to you. Does your private behaviour reflect that?

You say you want a deep relationship with a woman. Does the way you've trained yourself to look at and consume women support that?

You say you want freedom. How much control do your impulses have over you?

You say you want to become a particular kind of man. What are you repeatedly doing that moves you in the opposite direction?

These aren't questions designed to shame someone.

They're designed to create honesty.

Because without honesty about where you actually are, it's very difficult to deliberately become someone else.

Choosing the Right Coach or Therapist

Because coaching and therapy are both deeply relational, I think the person matters enormously.

Credentials matter. Training matters. Experience matters. Ethical standards matter.

But fit matters too.

Do your research. Understand the person's background. Read what they write. Listen to how they think. Look at their qualifications and experience. Understand their methodology and what they actually specialize in.

This is particularly important in coaching because the title “coach” itself doesn't tell you very much about someone's competence.

I also think worldview matters more than people sometimes acknowledge.

Even when a coach or therapist is trying to remain objective and non-judgmental, none of us exists without values, experiences and beliefs. Those things inevitably influence how we understand human behaviour.

It's one of the reasons I focus on men.

Could I coach women?

Of course.

Do I believe I can understand certain aspects of a woman's experience as deeply as a great coach who has dedicated her life and work to women?

Absolutely not.

I'd rather work where my experience, training and understanding can be used most effectively.

So, Coaching or Therapy?

The question isn't whether coaching or therapy is better.

It's what kind of work are you trying to do?

If something inside you needs clinical treatment, deeper psychological support or professional mental health care, find a good therapist (and the right methodology).

If there is a gap between the person you are and the person you want to become, and you're looking for someone to help you see that gap clearly, challenge you, hold you accountable and help you turn insight into action, that's where coaching can be enormously valuable.

For the men I work with, that gap often exists between their values and their behaviour.

Between the man they know they could be and the man they're consistently being.

It's to help him see himself clearly, decide who he wants to become, and then actually do the work required to close that gap.

That's coaching.